Several proxies used to access blocked torrent sites have mysteriously disappeared.

Oct 16, 2015 17:20 IST

If you are wondering why you are suddenly unable to access the popular torrent sites despite using a reverse proxy, you are probably among the millions who have lost access. Thousands of reverse proxies have mysteriously disappeared, leaving users unable to access torrent websites such as KickAss Torrents, The Pirate Bay, ExtraTorrent, YTS and more.

According to TorrentFreak's report earlier this week, popular torrent sites remained inaccessible in different parts of the world, including the UK, Italy, Denmark and France. The main reason behind the sudden blockade of proxies is court orders, which have been requested by the music, movie and publishing industries.

Proxies work by duplicating or mirroring torrent websites that have been blocked in certain parts of the world. Torrent sites are usually infringing copyrights of an original content, which attracts court orders blocking access to such sites. Since, torrent downloads are very popular among some Internet users, proxies to access these blocked websites gain heavy traction.

It appears these proxies have fallen under the radar for illicit activities and authorities are taking necessary actions to block them. Thousands of proxies are blocked and some domain names such as kickasstorrents.nu, yify.me, extratorrent.ch, 1337x.link, piratebay.onl, are listed for sale.

TorrentFreak dug deeper into the missing proxies and found many sites were connected to ProxyHouse and ProxyAds. ProxyHouse domain is also up for grabs among other proxy domain names.

Despite a large number of proxies taken down, users still have thousands more left in the open that can bypass court-blocked torrent sites. It's just that users must look harder for the unblocked proxies.